


Page one: Of bitemarks and the thoughts they provoke

by tooyoungtoknow



Series: Turn the page, and write my name [1]
Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Apples, F/M, a Shinigami, and Light misunderstanding attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:14:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27602621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tooyoungtoknow/pseuds/tooyoungtoknow
Summary: Light offers an apple to a goddess of death
Relationships: Yagami Light/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Turn the page, and write my name [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2151426
Kudos: 21





	Page one: Of bitemarks and the thoughts they provoke

**Author's Note:**

> A slightly different imagining of how Light met his Shinigami

He turned from the door with a bowl of apples in hand. On the night-dark covers on his bed sat a Shinigami. Her weight left no indentation in the mattress and her feet hung a few inches above the floor, leaving no shadow upon the pale green wood. It was as if she was only physically present in his mind, while the rest of the inanimate objects in his room stayed none the wiser. He let his eyes linger on her strange, small figure a few seconds too long and she turned her head to return the gaze. A porcelain-white face with all the attributes of a human stared back at him, but all the colors seemed wrong. Her eyes, by far the biggest feature, were a vibrant, poppy-red and unnaturally accentuated by the stark whiteness of the sclera around. Her lashes were thick and heavy, casting shadows on the pale cheeks which were, despite the overall thinness of the rest of her body, not hollow. The nose that elevated itself from between those unnerving eyes was small, white and perfect. It reminded him of the few expensive dolls his sister used to play with when she was younger.

Carefully, he crossed the space between the door and the creature that might have been a dream, or a figment of imagination up until a few minutes ago, and descended into his desk chair. It felt cold through the fabric of his trousers. Crimson eyes followed the movement of his hand as it set the bowl down, and lingered on the red fruit inside as it dropped into his lap.  
Her lips, blood-like in their redness and chapped from the heavy wind outside, parted to reveal wolf’s canines and blunt, human teeth, and he felt himself shudder at the sight of plainly obvious danger in such a weak looking creature.  
“I’ve never tried an apple from this world” she said thoughtfully.

Her voice was a melody meant for graveyards and churches. Quiet but not weak, whisper-soft but not tender, cold, but never threatening. Its ancient calmness paired with a youthful tone made her seem like a ghost speaking through the mouth of a child. She turned her head to him as she spoke and her hair followed the movement. It was a mesmerizing and terrible sight to behold. Shiny as if slick with oil and black like raven’s feathers, it completely disavowed gravity that pulled at mortals and held them fast to the ground they belonged to. It floated, instead, around her head as if she were under-water and, sure enough, when he stared too long at the strands’ fluid dance, Light felt like his lungs were filled with a heavy and swirling liquid instead of air. 

“What would you say they taste like?”

The question caught him by surprise, coming from the mouth of a creature that had informed him of the impending doom which awaited him at her hands only minutes ago. He was torn between relief and dread at the sudden and complete shift in the conversation. She had just spoken to him about the existence of heaven and hell, death-gods and notebooks that could end lives, and now she was asking about the taste of apples as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world.  
He felt his shoulders rise and fall almost instinctively. 

“I guess I’d say best discover for yourself.” he said, and pointed to the bowl “Feel free to help yourself to a few, if you’d like.”

In his mind, a voice filled with pragmatic dread at the sudden turn of events told him he didn’t have time to indulge in childish death-gods and their fancies, but something else made him push the bowl further down the desk and towards her.

She gave the apples an incredulous look, but their smooth red skin only glistened under the lamplight invitingly. Slowly, almost gingerly, she reached out and took one. Her hands were bony, but her fingers long. Nails, sharp and obsidian-black, broke the illusion of gentleness created by the slender gracefulness of the wrist and pale, perfect flesh. He imagined filing them slowly and carefully, until they acquired an oval shape, just like his own. She held the apple cupped in both palms, rhythmically squeezing it a few times, seeming surprised at the firmness and lack of give beneath her fingers. Then slowly she brought it to her lips and took a bite. Light fancied he could hear the sound of each individual tooth breaking the smooth red skin, and imagined the apple beginning to bleed out the wound and onto her tongue. Part of him felt relief when the Shinigami’s lips came away just as red as before, but dry, save for the slight sheen of juice on the bottom one. The other part was disappointed by the normalcy of the sight of a goddess of death chewing on an apple.

Surprisingly, he found he was eager to hear her verdict on the fruit, but the slow and methodical chewing stretched endlessly, the sound almost hypnotizing until he finally saw a small lump slide down the pale throat. After that they the room was plunged into silence. 

Light shifted in his chair, crossed one leg over the other, smoothed out a crease in the fabric of his trousers, uncrossed them again. Her eyes followed his movements thoughtfully. With a start he became aware of the fact she did not breathe, and off-handedly wondered at the use of her nose.  
"How do you find it?" he wanted to ask, but for the first time in as long as he could remember, his tongue had tied itself in a knot and layed like led against the floor of his mouth.  
She too said nothing to lift the weight of silence from his shoulders, but raised the bitten fruit back to her mouth. In wrapped fascination he watched as her bites became bigger, greedier, and the sound of chewing somehow more familiar. He could recall no coherent thoughts in his own head by the time she held nothing but the thin slice of yellow apple flesh surrounding the core. The picture of a goddess from another world sitting on his bed, thoroughly enjoying something as mundane as a simple apple was as unbelievable as the existence of fairies in his mind. She seemed misplaced, this creature forged from another world’s marble, upon the plain, industrial blanket and the backdrop of a highschool student’s room.

She examined the leftover piece held between her white palms, and scrunched her nose down at it.

“I like this human-world apple. It’s quite juicy. But I don’t like this part. It’s too thin to bite properly.”

Brows thinned to almost nothing frowned at the scrap of fruit in an almost childish accusation. Then her arm extended to the point of complete straightness, the pale flesh glistening from the artificial, too strong light form the ceiling. The apple-core ley against her palm like an offering, the clear indent of teeth still plainly visible at a couple places. 

“You can have it if you want to.” her calm voice spoke matter-of-factly, as if it were a normal trinket to offer.

So he un-tucked his fingers from where they were bent against his palm and layed it flat beneath hers. He felt no warmth radiate from her skin and when the apple-scrap touched his skin it felt chilly and weightless. 

She reached over him for another fruit, plump and red and with enough volume to bite into with the demanding eagerness of a child, and he raised the rejected core to his mouth. Silently he chewed, taking small bites of leftover apple-flesh, carefully avoiding the hard parts. The juice released between his teeth and he felt the rush of sweetness dissolve on his tongue. He imagined it was his first time of tasting it.

A smile curved the end of his lips. He knew a secret no other creature in the world was aware of. A mundane, petty secret of no consequence, but a secret nevertheless. It made something nervous and boyish flutter in his chest, and heat flooded his cheeks as he repeated it over and over in his mind. His fingers itched for a pen, to write it down with. It was one simple sentence. A couple of words. A sure, affirmative tone he relished. Gods of death loved apples. And Light was the only one who knew.


End file.
